Media Release

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has warned Australians about “the commitment of the ALP-LNP corporations to looking after the billionaires of Australia by selling off our resource industries and jobs” after the major parties’ MPs joined forces today to vote down laws to protect Aussie jobs.

Mr Katter, who co-sponsored the Protecting Local Jobs (Regulating Enterprise Migration Agreements) Bill 2012* in a bid to stop the carte blanche importation of foreign fly-in-fly-out workers at the expense of plum mining jobs for Australians, was among just three crossbench MPs to vote in favour of the legislation today in the House of Representatives.

“It would be eternally shameful to be associated with the current government responsible not only for clearing the way for these foreign fly-in workers, but also for bringing in 300 per cent more section 457 visa workers - 125,000 last year alone - than the LNP,” said Mr Katter.

“In many mining towns like Mackay, Mount Isa and even my own hometown Cloncurry, it is becoming 'Spot the Australian' because they are all foreign fly-in workers… and if they’re working for Australian pay and conditions then I am a Martian astronaut.”

Mr Katter blamed both the major parties for overseeing governments during which Australia’s resources industries had been given away to foreigners – leaving the profits, the resources, and now the wages, to be sent offshore while Australia was left with little more than holes in the ground.

Additionally, claims by some billionaire miners that they could not find local workers to fill the jobs beggared belief when there were hundreds of thousands in the unemployment queues, added
Mr Katter.

“The answer has been simple, ever since the Phoenicians invented money,” he said. “I went to work in Mt Isa because they paid extremely high wages – almost twice as I could get anywhere else as an unskilled labourer – and because we paid extremely low tax levels. So let our governments come to that.

“And they can start with our First Australian brothers of whom 10,000 in North Queensland are without jobs as I talk, and provide them with some training.

“This is simply about getting people to work for nothing in this country. They will undermine the wages of every single person in this country if we allow it to happen.

“Let whoever is the Government of Australia after September 14 be warned: Katter’s Australian Party will fight tenaciously against to bringing in people in from overseas to take our jobs and to undermine our wage structures.”

*Please note: An extract of the explanatory memorandum of the Bill is below.

Protecting Local Jobs (Regulating Enterprise Migration Agreements) Bill 2012

“The Protecting Local Jobs (Regulating Enterprise Migration Agreements) Bill 2012 amends the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Migration Act 1958.

The Bill will create a legislative framework for Enterprise Migration Agreements (EMA) to ensure such agreements are used only where genuinely necessary and do not adversely affect local job opportunities. The Bill also sets out various conditions that can be included when an EMA is made.

The Bill will require employers to advertise jobs to locals before they can get an EMA. It will also require a local jobs board listing jobs to be filled in the resources sector to be maintained by the Workplace Relations Minister.

Requirements can be placed on employers who use EMA’s to train and prioritise employment for locals, recently retrenched workers and other groups with high unemployment rates.

The Workplace Relations Minister can include a condition that an EMA participant provide, or contribute to, training for Australian residents other than those employed under the EMA.

The Workplace Relations Minister must also be satisfied that the EMA participant concerned has complied, and will continue to comply, with workplace laws.

The Bill will require a copy of an EMA to be tabled in each House of the Parliament as soon as practicable after it has been made.”

SOURCE: http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:"legislation/ems/r4845_ems_52fc3825-a14a-4aa7-b39f-8e8a1e348d5d"